An introduction to flexible working and the FlexWork project

By: Catherine Skerritt
If you run a small business in rural Europe you may feel disadvantaged by your location. However, the use of flexible working techniques can let you enjoy the better quality of rural life, attract high-quality staff and compete with urban rivals. The FlexWork project has been set up by the European Commission to provide small rural businesses with the tools needed to fully understand flexible working.
Perhaps the first thing to understand is what ‘flexible working’ is. Flexible working is about using technology to help people work more efficiently and exploit new types of business opportunity. This technology is being used to extend many traditional ways of work.
For example:
* Teams of home workers can do a much wider range of jobs and work together more effectively.
* Salesmen can become much more effective – e.g. by answering all of a customer’s questions without referring back to head office.
* Freelance professionals can form teams more quickly and work in ‘virtual’ teams that don’t need to meet physically.
* Groups of businesses can also form ‘teams’, so that they can react quickly to a wider range of opportunities.
The ‘flexibility’ we are talking about can take many forms, for example:
* Location. People can work from home, at a telecentre, at a number of sites or on the move.
* Time. This includes various types of flexi-time, part time working, and job sharing.
* Contracts. There may be more people on fixed term contracts, more sharing of work with other companies, and greater use of freelance workers.
* Work processes. Workers can become more responsible for how their work is organised and conducted.
* Management. Management has to concentrate more on the development of the company and creating the right team culture, rather than watching individual activities in detail.
So, what are the benefits from this new way of working?
We should start with the people, because they are the most valuable resource. They will make much better use of their time, work well as a team, and miss work less often since there will be fewer clashes between their personal lives and their business lives. There could also be cost savings. For example, it may be possible to reduce the amount of accommodation you need, or it may be possible to avoid recruiting extra staff. There are also major benefits that are more difficult to measure, and these include better access to the labour market and improved service to your customers.
Some small rural companies have already started working more flexibly, overcoming the problems of isolation. However, many small businesses are intimidated by the whole idea and find it difficult to obtain good advice on what tools and techniques would suit them best. These businesses need help.
FlexWork is trying to provide that help.
FlexWork is a project funded by the European Commission as part of a research and development programme called ‘Information Society Technologies’. The FlexWork team is a mixture of small companies and academic institutions from across Europe. They all have a lot of experience of working flexibly and advising other people on flexible working. Most of the partners are based in the more rural, or less-developed regions of Europe.

The FlexWork project team has put together a set of tools and information to help small businesses and their advisers introduce flexible working. All of these are on a website, www.flexwork.eu.com, together with links to other information about flexible working. From here, you can download any of the material for free.
First, there is a handbook of flexible working that describes flexible working, highlights the important issues you need to consider and describes how you can introduce it. There is a set of blueprints showing how other people have used different styles of flexible working and giving checklists to help you to introduce a similar style of flexible working. There is also a set of briefings on commercial, technical and social issues, so that you can dig deeper into what is most important to your business. One particularly useful tool on the web site is a technology matrix, which helps you to find the technologies that are likely to be most useful to your company and then explains them in simple terms.
Apart from making information available on its web site, the project is running regional workshops in many rural regions of Europe, to show small companies and their advisors how they can develop and implement practical plans for the introduction of flexible working.
Many small businesses in rural regions are having to look at how they can continue to survive. Flexible working will help them to survive and thrive, and the FlexWork project is here to show them how.
Flexwork is managed by the Telecommunications and Systems Software Group (TSSG) a research arm of Waterford Institute of Technology.